In Search of Remembrance

So, I will tell you the story of a young 7-year-old Jewish lad. I take you back to the year 1930, to the small coastal town of Beaufort, South Carolina, where he lived with his parents, Sam and Helen Lipton and his 3-year-old brother, Morey. His father was born in Baisogola, Lithuania and his mother in Kielce, Poland. He had grandparents , but not the pleasure of their proximity of company and enjoyment of their companionship. His grandparents lived far away in a mysterious place that his parents referred to as the “Old Country.” What he remembers are the dozens and dozens of letters written in Yiddish that traveled over the wide Atlantic between his mother and his grandparents and her siblings, nephews and nieces. At her knee he would sit as she unfolded the envelope, and in a flood of tears she read the precious words that evoked memories of her distant family.

His mother had been in America for 11 years when she decided to return to Poland to see her parents, Manachem Mendel and Rivka Machale Sterenzys and other members of the family. She borrowed the necessary money from a friend, gathered her two boys, packed the steamer trunk, bade farewell to her husband, Sam, and set out for New York City where they would board the American liner, The SS George Washington. Passport and other documents were in order as they set sail for Hamburg, Germany in May 1930. Thus began the great adventure.

her progeny to her parents and the rest of the family.

This is an edited version of a piece that was originally published in Holocaust Remembered, Vol. 1 in 2014. Today Joe Lipton is 100 years old.

Without the burden of care and responsibility, he was free to roam the great ship. Amusements included deck tennis and shuffleboard. The older passengers occupied themselves with the latter. Apparently it was an activity that accommodated their arthritis. When he strolled into view, they always invited him to participate. His age and size , they thought, was not a threat. His mother’s time was consumed with keeping track of his whereabouts, seeing that the boys were in decent repair and separating them when the 7-year-old got to teasing his younger brother.

Upon arrival in Hamburg, they boarded a train for Kielce where they fell into the arms of a flood of relatives. There was much kissing and hugging and a profuse amount of tearing—tears of happiness and joy. His mother proudly displayed

As a result of the incessant flow of correspondence between the two continents that his mother shared with him, he had learned the names of his Polish relatives. Now he could attach name to reality. When the relatives descended upon them, all speaking Yiddish at the same time, he imagined that he was again in Beaufort at the synagogue hearing the old immigrants discussing business in the mother-tongue during High Holiday service with intermittent “shushes” from the Rabbi. The young lad was quite adept in that tongue.

They stayed with his mother’s brother, Chaim Sterenzys, his wife Hugie and their children, Zosia, Yoel, Fella and Ben. When he first gazed upon them, he thought they were the handsomest family he had ever seen. The residence was modest, located in a tenement building and the plumbing, compared to American standard, seemed primitive. It was a different world. Although Hitler was next door, there was, in a child’s eye no noticeable sign that Jews were in the grip of anxiety. Life pursued its regular pattern. The daily routine was disrupted by the appear- ance of the American cousins. They would be trotted from Uncle Chiam’s home to Aunt Sura’s home to Aunt Chiyas home. Aunt Sura prepared them lunch. As he was about to partake, his Grandmother Rivka came dashing in with the entree’. Pushing her daughter’s serving aside, she put her boiled potatoes with sour cream and hardboiled eggs in its place. It was special attention to which he was unaccustomed.

Yoel, his cousin, asked if he would like to go to the football game. He was delighted and then disappointed. Football, unbeknownst to him, is the European name for soccer—a game of which he knew nothing. Ben, his contemporary, and he indulged in 7-year-old talk—school, games, and likes/dislikes. Little did either of them realize that in a mere nine years, Ben and his family would be victims of a grotesque German ideology , conceived and implemented by Adolph Hitler. But for now, an uncertain and tenuous normalcy prevailed. One may describe the interlude as a “Fiddler on the Roof” kind of period, a relative calmness before the tempest.

It seems they were forever going from one relatives’ house to another. They wanted to see what American boys looked like. All that attention could spoil a less vulnerable child, but he stood his ground and was determined not to be more spoiled than necessary. His mother was set upon the notion that her sons should have tailor-made clothing. Of course it was off to the tailor who naturally was Jewish. God forbid a non-Jew would be in such an ignominious trade. The name of the tailor has long been forgotten by the 7-year-old, however, to this day, 83 years later, he can hear him singing a haunting Yiddish song. Oddly or magically he still remembers the words and melody. The lyrics describe a mischievous young Hebrew school lad named Motel, who was always annoying the Rabbi. The opening line is imbedded in his mind and on occasion he releases it from its entombment and sings it to himself. In that moment of nostalgia, 83 years past, he sees the place, the time and the images. The lyrics translate, “Oh tell me Motel, what will become of you; you are worse than before….” Indeed he hears it still when overcome with sadness of remembrance. Those haunting words from the mouth of a humble tailor bent over his machine, the cloth flying under the needle and his foot on the peddle rapidly in motion, will soon be silenced.

What does a 7-year-old know of the threats and anxieties that his relatives felt? It was 1930 and if there was apprehension he did not see it, feel it , or understand it. He was aware that his relatives lived, for the most part, from hand to mouth. His mother and her brother Gabriel Stern who lived in Columbia had always enclosed money in their replies. To this day, he hears the echo of his Grandfather’s admonishment, “Die velt is a bikele un der iker iz nisht moira tsu haben”. (The world is a narrow bridge and the main thing is not to be afraid.)

A glance at the Visa revealed that it was time to prepare to depart Kielce. Three months had simply evaporated. He remembers as though yesterday, the hugs, the kisses and the tears that went round and round, and then again and again. All knew that this was the last time they would see their daughter, their sister, their aunt and her two boys. He has since come to realize that the last time is not only a long, long time but forever. Seemingly as an afterthought, Uncle Chiam, mother’s brother, motioned her aside. Holding her 7-year-old by the hand and carrying her 3-year-old, he heard his Uncle in a low, guarded voice caution his sister. “Henchile,” he said, “when you cross the border into Germany, be very careful, es tutsach dorten” (things are stirring there). As that young boy looks back and relives that moment, questions arise that would not occur to a 7-yearold. In the short span of 9 years, September 1, 1939, the conflagration would commence.

On September 10, 1930, Helen Lipton and her two sons arrived in New York City. Eight years later, November 9, 1938, the assault on the Jewish population of Germany commenced with Kristalnacht. And on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and the systematic annihilation of European Jewry began. Shortly after the occupation of Poland, the Germans took over the operation of government services. Helen Lipton received mail bearing the Nazi seal of censorship and stamped “Geoffnet ” (opened). The enclosed notes were brief, restricted and absent of detail. When the last letter arrived about September 1940, a cloud descended upon the Lipton household. His parents knew that the killing machine was in Poland and all their relatives were at risk.

It was not until after the war that the remnant that survived would surface. His cousin Ben Stern, his wife Jadzia, and their daughter 18-month-daughter Lilly managed to outlive the ordeal. With the intervention and assistance of his Uncle Gabriel Stern and his Aunt Helen Lipton, the Ben Stern family came to America. Once again the two, once 7-year-old cousins, would embrace. It was one of those indescribable, unforgettable moments that lives in the mind, the heart and in his memory. ■

Born Martha Mondschein in Kassel, Germany, Bauer was the youngest of three children. She spent her first three years in Brussels, Belgium. At age eight, she moved to Cologne, Germany to live with relatives, but moved back to Kassel when she was twelve.

In 1933 while working at a department store in Kassel, Bauer had her first experience with the Nazis. She was very conscious that things were going to change. Many of the Jewish young people were trying to prepare themselves for a potential escape.

In 1935, Bauer realized that things were not normal in Germany. She knew that many people had to move everything out of their